{"id":244,"date":"2011-03-03T16:29:05","date_gmt":"2011-03-03T16:29:05","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.fanagrams.net\/blog\/?p=244"},"modified":"2011-11-08T12:30:22","modified_gmt":"2011-11-08T18:30:22","slug":"dogs-smell-poo","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.fanagrams.com\/blog\/2011\/03\/dogs-smell-poo\/","title":{"rendered":"Dogs Smell Poo"},"content":{"rendered":"

My friend Marion gave me a little news article about harnessing the power of the dog\u2019s extraordinary nose.\u00a0 We are all familiar with dogs that can sniff out bombs, cocaine and other contraband, but\u00a0now there is a dog that can smell colon cancer in a human stool \u2013 and according to this article, the dog outperforms the standard test of looking for blood in the stool.<\/p>\n

This article, published in the aptly named journal \u201cGut,\u201d describes a single black Lab who was originally a water rescue dog, but has been repurposed as a stool sniffer.\u00a0 The dog is rewarded with a tennis ball if he correctly smells the volatile chemicals produced by colon cancer.<\/p>\n

This article was picked up by a lot of news services, but I don\u2019t think its \u201cnewsworthiness\u201d was related to a health care advance, but instead to the disturbing visual image.\u00a0 I picture Rex, a beleaguered dog who is forced to spend his days sniffing umpteen stool samples as they move by on a relentless conveyer belt.\u00a0 Behind him is a huge pile of tennis balls that he is allowed to play with for 10 minutes every 8 hours.\u00a0 Hovering nearby is Steffen, the owner who has spent years creating this super breed of dog.\u00a0 Rex is his stand out star.\u00a0 However his venture capital financing is based on his ability to breed dogs that can smell lung cancer from\u00a0the more convenient breath sample.\u00a0 But the investors are worried.\u00a0 Last week Rex\u2019s progeny Ace and Primo failed miserably and even worse Rex has lost interest in tennis balls.\u00a0 What’s worse is that PETA has targeted him, saying that forcing a dog to sniff poo all day is cruel.\u00a0 Steffan pointed out to PETA that they are unjustly ascribing human sensibilities to dog.\u00a0 While fecal odor induces a gag reflex in humans, anyone who visits a dog park know sthat\u00a0dogs love smelling poo.\u00a0 PETA\u00a0is\u00a0unmoved.<\/p>\n

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My friend Marion gave me a little news article about harnessing the power of the dog\u2019s extraordinary nose.\u00a0 We are all familiar with dogs that can sniff out bombs, cocaine and other contraband, but\u00a0now there is a dog that can … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[17],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-244","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-squibs"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p7iVc8-3W","post_mailing_queue_ids":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.fanagrams.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/244","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.fanagrams.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.fanagrams.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fanagrams.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fanagrams.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=244"}],"version-history":[{"count":9,"href":"https:\/\/www.fanagrams.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/244\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":247,"href":"https:\/\/www.fanagrams.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/244\/revisions\/247"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.fanagrams.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=244"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fanagrams.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=244"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fanagrams.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=244"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}